I have seen quite a few of us talking about this kind of thing in a few threads. I thought I would start a new thread for us to chat about it. It can be a form of support for those who need it or just a place to talk about a workout you want to try. This is not just a thread for overweight people. Everyone is welcome!
I know not everyone is going to want to give their stats but I find it helpful for myself.
I'm 30 years old. I stand 5 feet 4 inches. I started the year at 225 pounds wearing a very tight size 18 pants. I should have been a 20 but couldn't bring myself to go shopping. I fell into the "obese" category. I weigh myself on Fridays and as of last Friday I was 195.6. I wear size 16 pants and they fit, no squeezing required.
I have some exciting milestones coming up! I was 180 pounds ten years ago when I started having kids. My birthday is July 1st. I would like to be back at 180 by then, but realize that's a big goal and I might fall short. I am still obese but I'm over half way to not being obese. When I reach 174 I will officially be overweight. I'm so excited about that LOL. Who would think someone could be excited about being overweight?
I have a bunch more but need to get the kids down for a nap. I will be back this afternoon.
I have issues with my corporal image, I used to be very thin when I was a teenager, but then I got my woman body and I was more curvier than my mom would like, sooooooo she keep telling me that I should watch what I eat yadda yadda yadda cue to me doing exactly the opposite of what I'm told to do.
I don't consider myself to be too overweight, I can afford to lose some pounds for sure, but I'm healthy and I don't eat crap. But I want to look better and feel better when I'm out shopping and I want to give LO a good example.
I'm 31 and 177 pounds right now last year I was at 183 just before I got pregnant. My highest while pregnant was 190 and that was 2 weeks before LO was born. I'm 5"5'. The year before last I was just above the line of type I obesity and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't want to be obese. Right now I'm on the higher range of overweight and I hate that too!!!
My short term goal is to go to 165 and I would love to get to 155 by the end of the year. I have my sister's wedding in October so I want to look awesome! Also I have a couple of jeans that I want to wear again and get ride of this hint of double chin that I have (I hate it).
Yup, I'm 30. I started to panic about turning 30 a couple months before I hit it. I think I might have mentioned it on here. That's probably why you thought I was older. Oh and I have a bunch of kids LOL. I started at 20 and had them all close together. First was born just before I turned 21 and last was born when I was 28.
I can see why what your mom said would have driven you in the other direction. I'm an adult and still don't want to be lectured about my food choices. I think your goals seem very reasonable. It looks like you would need to lose less than 3 pounds a month to get to 155 by years end. You can do it!
The hardest changes for me have been not skipping meals, getting more sleep, and finding time for myself so I can fit in workouts. I skipped meals everyday and it was one of the main reasons why I got so big. I would be busy in the mornings and skip breakfast. I would have a late lunch (again, too busy to eat at the regular time) but by that point I was starving and would eat whatever I could get my hands on quickly. I didn't want to wait and make something. Of course I had waited so long that I never really felt satisfied. I would eat on and off for the rest of the day. Now I rarely skip a meal.
Getting more sleep was hard as well. I would get the kids in bed and stay up late to finish things and to get a few minutes to myself. I would be up until 2 or 3 in the morning. I would get up with the kids at 6:30 and get them off to school. I might get to lay back down for a hour or so till the babies got up. I would get 3-5 hours of sleep broken up into 2 parts. I was tired all the time. Now I try to go to bed no later than midnight, usually by 11. It's hard I'm a night person by nature. I have had to give up the idea of getting "everything" on my to do list done. Now the laundry sits and waits for me to fold it until the next day. If dishes aren't finished by bedtime they get done after breakfast.
Finding time for myself may have been the hardest of all. I am very hard on myself. I don't want people thinking I just sit around all day. I know some people think SAHP are lazy and have very high expectations for us. I would try to make everything perfect and it never was. There is always something else to do. I've had to try and let it go. Now I take 45 minutes out of my day to walk on the treadmill and watch a tv show (netflix) or listen to music. I deserve down time just like everyone else. Being a SAHM has nothing to do with that.
The truth is my house doesn't look as good as it did when I was 30 pounds heavier. But it still looks ok, things didn't fall apart. Well some days they do but that happened before too. I'm still too hard on myself and try to do too much but I'm hoping once DH and I are back together in the same house that will get better. It's a process, I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn but I am trying. I will have set backs but I'm much better at picking myself back up than I used to be. I don't let a bad day turn into an excuse for a bad week anymore.
*please excuse any typos/spelling mistakes. I'm typing, talking on the phone and sort of folding clothes LOL.*
The truth is my house doesn't look as good as it did when I was 30 pounds heavier. But it still looks ok, things didn't fall apart. Well some days they do but that happened before too. I'm still too hard on myself and try to do too much but I'm hoping once DH and I are back together in the same house that will get better. It's a process, I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn but I am trying. I will have set backs but I'm much better at picking myself back up than I used to be. I don't let a bad day turn into an excuse for a bad week anymore.
That right there is priceless... I have very little will power and a bad day could very easily become a bad week thinking "oh well I'll start again on Monday!"
I weigh myself on Fridays and as of last Friday I was 195.6.
Mom o' that is awesome and so close to your goal weight it's making my fingers tingle. I'm cheering you on for a great birthday this summer.
I don't really have any weight loss goals. My problem isn't with weight it's more with stamina and persistance and scheduling.
It's really lame but when my husband wants to go to the gym in the evenings it's so much easier for me to have him take one or both of the girls so I can get stuff done. He always wants me to come with him but I can't muster up the enthusiasm.
When he does get me to go and he tries to get me on a schedule I always beg off once I get my period and it takes forever for me to get back to going regularly again.
It's not that I don't "like" my gym. It's just that I'm not motivated to go there. I have some old videos that I can start with at my own pace and without going anywhere.
I hope you guys don't mind me checking in here with my goals and accomplishments. They won't be measurements or anything like that. Mainly just sticking with something I started and a group to be accountable to.
that is an awesome accomplishment Mom6! Congratulations!
I need to lose at least 20 lbs before the summer is over. Other things seem to keep getting in the way and my work project has lately had me canceling workouts to finish up stuff. I've recently started the couch to 5k program (for maybe the 5th time). I try to remember when I completed it in that past and was running it consistently, but it feels like a dream at this point. And I'll stop now since every sentence further I try to write leans more towards needing therapy :)
As I said, I'm not doing any weigh ins or anything like that. I have three goals
1. Stick to this for three months and not quit even when I get my period. 2. Do some sort of stretching and cardio at least five times a week. I'll have to figure out how much and when but I'm not to that yet. 3. Get on a regular sleep/wake schedule of at least 6 hours sleep in a row per night.
If I can do those three things I will be very happy.
Dqm, do you have something specific you can set your sights on to help you reach your goal. You mentioned wanting more stamina and persistence. Have you every thought of training for a marathon? Some sort of goal you can work towards? As juvenile as it sounds I want to do a Zombie Run someday. Once I'm in a bit better shape I want to start the C25K program as part of my training. It gives me something to work towards. I was glad to see sleeping is one of your goals. It has made a world of difference for me. It amazing how much you can get done when you don't feel like the walking dead!
Tigerlily, do you like the C25K program? I want to get to it eventually but I'm worried I won't be able to do it. I walk on the treadmill most days for 45 minutes. It's set to a 5% incline and 3mph. I have worked my way up from 2 mph and no incline. I'm thinking about making every other 5 minutes jogging but I'm so nervous LOL. What is it that keeps you coming back to it?
Today was my weigh in and I'm down another 1.2 pounds to 194.4. I've passed the 30 pound mark in 3 1/2 months! It is one of my smallest losses to date but I'm still so excited to have passed 30!
I'm 37(about to be 38), 5'2, and will know my weight later on today. Last I was weighed 192. I have lost some inches recently, I know because my swim suit is loose and wearing a tankini well pulling up the shorts during water aerobics is embarrassing.
I've started cooking meals that will have left overs in the crockpot. I try to count calories, but the crockpot meals don't translate well. There's no "xlbs of chicken" or "ylbs chuck roast" that I can choose to go into my recipes. I've found that my issue is eating ENOUGH calories. I eat 1 meal a day and MIGHT snack on stuff in the day before dinner.
Would it help if you combined all the calories for the meal and then divided those calories into portion sizes? Like 100 calories of pineapple, 150 calories of brown sugar, 180 calories of butter, 1200 calories of chicken= 1630 for the whole crockpot. That's 6 servings and that comes to about 272 calories per serving. You would have to weigh the chicken and cut it into serving size portions (as well as weighing/measuring the other ingredients) but it might be worth it.
-- Edited by Mom of half a dozen on Saturday 20th of April 2013 12:13:04 PM
Yikes I suck. Good thing I said 5 days a week because I already skipped the first two. I couldn't find those damned tapes. I've had them for years and kept pushing them aside and now that I want them I can't find them. So anyway, I'm going to ride my bike today instead of staying in front of the TV/computer.
I do like the program Mom6. The part I love about it is that I will run as slow as I need to because all that matters is finishing. If I need to walk a section instead of run, I do. And I repeat the same week until I want to/can move on. So the program is really easy to follow since it can be adjusted to fit my fitness level and it's such a sense of accomplishment when you can run 3 miles at once at the end. Seeing such a difference from when you start (and can barely breathe) to running the full 3 miles.
I also found that when I started adding in the jillian michael's 30 day shred 3-5 times a week, my running improved drastically. Maybe not on the days that I did both, but overall, I was repeating weeks less often and wasn't running quite as slow.
So far I've lost about 3.5 lbs, mostly from trying to change eating habits. I think my goal for now is to start adding in some of the videos, especially for days I don't run at all.
That's great! The slower you lose the better chance of keeping it off.
Cutting drinks with calories helped me. I lived on 4C powdered green iced tea mix. Now I drink water, if I'm in the mood for flavor, I add a 4C fruit punch flavor packet (no calories, no sugar, 100% vitamin C) and sometimes as a "treat" I'll have a diet cola, but that's rare. I couldn't understand how I wasn't losing weight - I didn't eat too much and I was walking but the weight stayed the same, then I decided to cut the sugary drinks and after about three weeks I saw the scale go down.
I also eat every few hours. Breakfast for me most days is "weight management" instant oatmeal (but today I had a low fat English muffin with reduced sugar jelly). Then I'll bring a fruit cup or yogurt for a mid morning snack and lunch is a salad with chicken or (like today) a sandwich with low fat ham & turkey & cheese. I'll have a snack when I get home from work (rice cakes with peanut butter) and dinner is whatever I feel like having but I pay close attention to when I feel satisfied. Even if there is just one bite left, if I'm feeling full, I stop eating. No more forcing those last bites because I hate to waste food.
It all adds up. Or should I say it all adds down? LOL!
-- Edited by FRAED on Monday 22nd of April 2013 12:42:18 PM
As I've mentioned before - I've been trying to lose weight over the last year and have lost 36 pounds!
I too was skinny as a kid and all through high school - I would describe my body then as that of a 12 year old boy's (but with a little more in the chest area LOL). I had my first child at 19 and afterwards had a woman's body, which I was fine with until my late 20s when I found myself in a bad relationship and I dealt with the stress by eating and I ballooned up. My highest non pregnant weight was 214 pounds.
I went up and down a few pounds here and there. After I had my son 14 years ago I went back up and when he was about 3 years old I started to lose weight - without trying (to be honest - I had a raging high school like crush on a man - we never dated but I was nuts about him and I think the excitement of knowing I was going to see him was what caused me to start losing weight). I lost 63 pounds in a year! But, then I met my now husband and after we started to live together for some reason he didn't want to just eat rice or a few pierogies (men! LOL!) and I put about 50 of those pounds back on.
Last April when I decided to finally do something about my weight I was 201 pounds - I'm 5 feet 10 inches tall and am now 45 years old (46 in June). I was a size 14. I lost the weight slowly and without depriving myself. I now weigh 165 pounds & am a size 8 (I weigh myself on Monday mornings).
I'd like to lose about 10 more "buffer" pounds, though. I've been this weight for a couple of months now so I guess I have to up my walks and cut a few more calories.
Wooow so many success stories already!!! It makes me want to push myself harder to get where I want. I went shopping with my sisters yesterday, and I didn't like what I saw on the mirror all that much. However I lost a little bit this week, only by counting calories.
I need more discipline with what I eat, I've been above my calorie budget every day last week, so if I behave I think I'm going to see more results soon. So here's my result for last week: 174 pounds
I agree!!! I think it's easier when you are doing it slowly.
Another thing that has help me a lot is cutting down on dairy, my ob told me that it will help me to get regular (TMI I'm sorry) and that dairy has no nutritional value for adults really. And he was right! I'm more regular than ever and I feel better all around.
My downfall for diets is carbs and alcohol! I love bread and sweets. Last week I was having a daily glass of wine and I'm cutting that one this week (150 cals a day!!!) and maybe next week I'll cut the mayo in my sandwich (90 cals a day!!!). Also at the cafeteria they always give us rice with the main course and I'm requesting them to hold it, that helps a lot as well. It's always the little things that add up.
Thanks for the encouragement! I loooooove My fitness pal, the calculation that it makes once you finish your food diary is awesome! Also the little messages that the friends write are great I only noticed them yesterday lol, so i'll be writing some messages in return :D
Oh Carbs! Yes.....they are a weakness of mine. I try to limit them to once a week but I make sure I do have something so I don't end up going nuts. LOVE my pasta. sigh
. I'm still too hard on myself and try to do too much but I'm hoping once DH and I are back together in the same house that will get better. It's a process, I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn but I am trying. I will have set backs but I'm much better at picking myself back up than I used to be. I don't let a bad day turn into an excuse for a bad week anymore.
